SCOTUS adds health care petitioner

Liberty University is the latest in a series of petitioners to ask the Supreme Court to review its case against the health care reform law.

The conservative university filed its petition, along with two individuals, on Friday.

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Last month, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a tax law barred it from reviewing Liberty’s case until the individual mandate was in place in 2014. Liberty is asking the Supreme Court to overturn that decision and review whether the law is constitutional.

Like the many other lawsuits against health reform, Liberty is challenging the constitutionality of the individual mandate. It is also raising questions about the employer requirements.

The Supreme Court now has petitions to hear four health care reform cases, including ones filed by 26 states, the commonwealth of Virginia and the Thomas More Law Center in Michigan.

The justices are expected to take at least one of the cases and could combine aspects of some of the others.

Liberty has a strong shot at being included in a combination of cases because it directly addresses the issue of the tax law, called the Anti-Injunction Act.

“This is the only pending challenge to the act that presents the threshold question of the AIA, and individual and the employer mandate,” Liberty wrote in its petition. “No other case presents all three issues together, and no case except this one has concluded that the AIA is a bar to reaching the merits or has addressed the employer mandate, as no case but this one raised the employer mandate on appeal.”

The Supreme Court is expected to announce a decision no sooner than late November.

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 1:58 p.m. on October 10, 2011.